


Those Unfamiliar Teeth

by remi_wolf



Series: Travel Logs and Memoirs of Remo Long Legs [4]
Category: The Mechanisms (Band)
Genre: (implied and in the past though), Canon-Typical Violence, Filk, Gang Violence, Gen, Gun Violence, Songfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-29
Updated: 2020-02-29
Packaged: 2021-02-27 23:59:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,536
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22960588
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/remi_wolf/pseuds/remi_wolf
Summary: In this week's edition of The Travel Logs of Remo Long Legs, our protagonist and narrator has found a strange instrument tucked away in the bowels of the Aurora. Luckily, it seems as though they know how to play. It acts as a siren song, though one that only Ashes answers, allowing for a conversation about Remo's past in the City to occur. However.....life in a wolf pack is vastly different to that of an Olympian, no matter the origin of either.
Series: Travel Logs and Memoirs of Remo Long Legs [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1608139
Comments: 1
Kudos: 14
Collections: Beguilements and Distractions





	Those Unfamiliar Teeth

**Author's Note:**

> So! Song fic! I actually filked something, and this is an original song! It took forever! It's based off of "The Humor's of Whiskey," and specifically Hozier's acoustic version of it that's posted on youtube somewhere. Go find it, he is a fey lord among mortals, and I would kill someone for him to do a full album of traditional music. But yeah! It's that song. Gives a bit of a view into Remo's past and all in the City. Lore! Hopefully you enjoy it!

It took approximately three weeks before Remo finally found the piano. It didn’t come as much surprise, as less than a week passed before the near-constant singing around the ship began, and then ended just as suddenly two days later. He hadn’t recognized even half of the songs, though some of the ones that Ashes and the Toy Soldier sang seemed vaguely familiar in the way that he only half-remembered it, and certainly with different words. But it was almost comforting, until it grew annoying, and they were grateful for the silence. 

And now, after two weeks, they were begging for  _ something  _ again. The ship had her noises, yes, and occasionally he and Nastya would talk, as well as Ashes, but even that was rare as the interactions with the others was remarkably uncommon. Even Jonny was nowhere to be found, and whenever he made his way to the bridge and the pilot’s chair, Brian was nowhere to be seen. Let alone Marius, Tim, and Raphaella. It was lonely, and certainly not what Remo was used to after the constant life pulsing through the City. Silence shouldn’t be so all-consuming like this. Even in death, there wasn’t silence. 

Needless to say, the piano probably helped stave off the inevitable mental breakdown that would happen instead approximately another two weeks into the voyage between stars. 

While the particular look and feel of this piano was unusual under Remo’s fingers, a piano was a piano, no matter the planet of origin, and the familiar sensation of white plastic—though these keys felt off from the usual slick plastic they remembered—under their fingertips quickly came back as they started quietly playing a few of the songs that they remembered. Nothing fancy, just a few themes here and there. 

“Who taught you to play?”

“It was—”

“Kid, you’ve listened to us.”

Remo glanced up, looking at Ashes before frowning and looking back at the keys. He knew what Ashes meant, and honestly, it made him just want to disappear back into the corridors of the ship and the room near the rear viewing platform, but there wasn’t a good way to easily disappear from under Ashes’ gaze when he was already pinned to the bench like an insect on display. 

This wasn’t something Remo was used to. He had never been terribly good at improvisation, and so started to wrack his brains for something that would satisfy the Quartermaster. After a few moments, he quietly switched to another theme, playing through it a few times as he puzzled over the words in his head. 

> _ “Come guess me this riddle what/packs and wolf mothers _
> 
> _ “Find rarer than Lotus and never in death? _
> 
> _ “High decks say they own it and nymphs might come take it _
> 
> _ “But only ‘Lympians can know what it is.” _

Hades—Ashes, right, though they looked as stern as they usually did from the posters of the Acheron’s laird that he remembered from the City—frowned as they looked at Remo before sighing and shrugging. “That’s too many things to count, Remo. Make it more specific than that, or I’ll never be able to guess.”

> _ “What does the Sphinx steal, what’s hopeless collecting, _
> 
> _ “What’s basic for life and vital for love _
> 
> _ “And what helped Prometheus to hack into ‘lympus _
> 
> _ “Sure wasn’t it freedom from Acheron’s gaze.” _

As Remo played through a bridge, just the main chorus repeated with a slightly fancier line that he wouldn’t be able to keep up while trying to sing as well, he waited for Ashes to understand what he was getting at. Ashes laughed softly, stepping close to Remo before shaking their head, starting to pick up a line of the song while they half-knelt on the edge of the bench next to Remo. 

> _ “But didn’t you hear that the hacker was lying _
> 
> _ “He didn’t have time and was caught instantly? _
> 
> _ “Prometheus was just some Olympian child _
> 
> _ “Who hacked and stole and got in o’r his head.” _

Remo rolled his eyes, looking at them with a frown on his face. Of course Ashes got stuck on the mention of Prometheus, acting as though that was the important part, instead of recognizing that it was a handy example of someone with too much time on his hands that stumbled upon something because of it. He puzzled over the next few lines of the song to try and get Ashes to understand this riddle, rather than focusing on the minutiae of what he was saying. 

> _ “But stories were made of less than that whelp _
> 
> _ “Who had time to oppose the ‘Lympian Tow’r _
> 
> _ “So what had he that wolf mothers could ne’er imagine?  _
> 
> _ “Sure wasn’t it time from the Acheron’s gaze? _

Ashes frowned as their fingers hesitated over the keys before looking at Remo, humming softly before nodding for them to go on. Remo sighed softly as he tried to string together the last phrase to properly explain and give his response and answer to the strange riddle he had laid out for Ashes. 

> _ “But the streets are no match for a brother protective _
> 
> _ “Who keeps you from fights and out of the pack _
> 
> _ “And so you start lessons from a nymph and musician _
> 
> _ “Whose voice was pretty and stolen for you. ” _

Ashes frowned as the two of them pulled their four hands from the piano, looking at Remo for a few moments before the silence was broken by a quick, mechanical clapping. Remo nearly jumped, before relaxing as they just realized that it was the Toy Soldier. He still didn’t know what he thought of it, but...at least it seemed vaguely less murderous than some of the others did. 

“You Have A Beautiful Voic e.  Almost As Beautiful As The Wine-red Blood You Create,” it said, offering a bright smile before holding up a pot. “I Was Going To Try To Make Some Tea. Would You Like To Join Me? I Heard Singing And Thought I Would Ask.”

Remo stared at the Toy Soldier before shaking his head slowly. “Thank you for the offer, but no.”

Ashes made a small face as well, watching as the Toy Soldier walked down another corridor, whistling the tune sung moments before, before finally looking back at Remo. 

“Which nymph taught you?”

Remo shrugged. “I don’t remember his name. Lionel, Linus, something like that. Had a younger brother he insisted was far better than him, but I don’t know. He was nice enough. His house was over my pack’s den. And then Charon picked him up, and that was that. The next time I heard his voice was used for your propaganda machines.”

Ashes opened their mouth to speak, and Remo shook his head. He didn’t want to hear any sort of excuse from Hades, nor from Ashes now that the title had been discarded, and so he turned away, looking around the tucked-away corridor for an escape route. None were terribly visible, but there was a walkway above them, and so he stood up on the bench, jumping up to catch the lower rung of the handrail so he could start climbing back up through the decks of the ship. His clever plan to escape was foiled as Ashes gripped their ankle, pulling him back to the ground, not caring about the fact that the gravity was  _ still turned on _ , and Remo fell, barely able to catch himself and keep his head from cracking against the ground. He frowned, about to speak and tell off Ashes, but it was his turn to be interrupted.

“It was never anything personal. You live long enough and individual lives don’t matter. The Acheron was interesting with how it ran the city, and I worked for centuries to ensure that it kept running to see what I could get it to do.”

Remo laughed, sighing as he closed his eyes and thought back to that musician that had given a wolf pup music lessons because they were different than the Olympian brats, and he finally opened his eyes, looking at Hades and seeing Ashes. Ashes the person who seemed to be full of anger, even as they tried to explain things away, and ashes in the way their body was imperfect and far from the vision that was printed and shown around the City so frequently as the person everyone would serve in the end, no matter who they were. 

“Maybe that’s the problem. None of you think about the people left behind and what happens when you play those games.” Remo couldn’t help the slight bit of venom that accompanied the words before he just snarled and turned to leave. Ashes, luckily, let him go this time as he walked down the hallway to see about disappearing to an observation deck to look at the stars.

The exploding pain that left a crimson pool behind as Remo stumbled and fell from the force was unexpected, though perhaps it was fair as he looked back to see Ashes with their gun pointed at them. He  _ had  _ made a rather nasty comment. The second shot that turned the world black was perhaps a bit unfair, though. The shot to his chest would have been enough to kill him as it was.


End file.
